5 ms·

Modern EV ranges are in the ballpark of 350km which charging time under one hour. That's more than enough for most nowadays especially in Europe where long trip

Modern EV ranges are in the ballpark of 350km which charging time under one hour. That's more than enough for most nowadays especially in Europe where long trips are not the norm and well past grocery getter. You can cross most European countries with one stop.

osigurdson 1y ago
So all EVs on a 400km+ trip will be at the charging station 1/4 of the time. I don't think that works at scale. Charging stations would be like event parking at a Taylor Swift concert. Gas cars are still objectively better which is sad and unexpected. I never would have predicted this insanely low rate of improvement 10 years ago. In terms of trucks / tow vehicles, it is even further off. The Cybertruck laughably has 250km of tow range. Disconnecting every 2 hours to charge for an hour is absurd. Until we see a step change in battery technology, EVs are grocery getters in my books. So, might as well double down and make them super cheap with 100km range.
- dns_snek 1y ago
  There's no "objectively better", just "objectively better given some set of constraints". If my commute is less than 100km, I can charge at home, have free solar energy, and only go on long trips once or twice a year, would you still say that gas cars are "objectively better"? If you regularly go on 400km+ trips or have nowhere to charge an EV overnight then by all means, avoid EVs.
  - osigurdson 1y ago
    From some objective function a hot wheels car is superior. It all just depends on everything else - my mental model for the universe is a marble rolling on an impossibly flat surface.
- dreamcompiler 1y ago
  I typically recharge my Model Y every 200 miles for about 20 minutes. Which is similar to how I drove in an ICE car: I like a break every 200 miles so I stop for gas, spend 5 minutes refueling and then 15 using the facilities and having a snack. The difference is that in the Tesla the refueling takes place in parallel to me using the facilities and having a snack. The car refuels itself unattended and it will notify me on my phone when it has enough charge to continue.
  - osigurdson 1y ago
    how often do you have to wait around for a charge station to be available? This is the one thing that I can see if we were to have very wide scale adoption of EVS with current battery technology this would essentially become intractable.
    - dreamcompiler 1y ago
      Never. The car routes me to the nearest charge location with free space. I have heard this can be a problem in California but I rarely go there.
- rsynnott 1y ago
  > So all EVs on a 400km+ trip will be at the charging station 1/4 of the time. ... How many people _regularly_ make 400km trips, though? Like, the vast majority of the cars on the road at any given time are not making 400km trips, or anything like it. Some countries in Europe are not 400km across. (Also that's probably ~4 hours driving; most people are probably stopping for a bit after that anyway).
  - osigurdson 1y ago
    Why then is the range of a basic car (like a Camry) 700+ km even with extensive refuelling network. If 99.9% of drivers never need this range they have smaller tanks.
    - rsynnott 1y ago
      Because increasing the range of a petrol car is practically free (and in many cases the tank sizes were kind of notionally set 50 years ago when engines were far less efficient; as engines got more efficient no reason to make them _smaller_). Like, virtually no-one is driving 700km non-stop (that's going to be probably eight hours unless you have excellent roads the whole way; it's arguably _unsafe_, and certainly most people would want to at least eat in that time), but, really, there's no downside. For electric cars, there _is_ a serious downside to having huge range; it makes them expensive (and heavy). So manufacturers will tend to stop at "sensible for most use cases". I'm sure there are some people for whom electric car range is still a problem, but it's a niche market, especially in _Europe_ (again, you can drive across many countries in Europe in 400km).
      - osigurdson 1y ago
        Yeah ya, EV range is just fine as is. No need to improve that at all.
        rsynnott 1y ago
        I mean, sure, more would be better, but it's _fine_ for the vast majority of users at this point.
- tzs 1y ago
  > So all EVs on a 400km+ trip will be at the charging station 1/4 of the time That's way off, because the person above you gave a way too low charging speed. Someone who takes long trips is going to get something that charges fast like in IONIQ 5 or 6. The IONIQ 6 long range RWD model charges from 10 to 80% in 16 minutes at a 250 kW charger. That would be about 350 km of range at freeway speeds in Europe. On a long trip then, once you've used up the charge you started with and have make the rest of the trip on energy from charging breaks that would be a 16 minute break every 350 km. 350 km is about 2.8 hours of travel, so about 8% of your remaining trip time after you reach your first stop would be spent charging.
  - seanmcdirmid 1y ago
    > That's way off, because the person above you gave a way too low charging speed. To be fair, 20 minutes for an L3 charge from 20 to 80% is technically under an hour.

osigurdson 1y ago

So all EVs on a 400km+ trip will be at the charging station 1/4 of the time. I don't think that works at scale. Charging stations would be like event parking at a Taylor Swift concert. Gas cars are still objectively better which is sad and unexpected. I never would have predicted this insanely low rate of improvement 10 years ago. In terms of trucks / tow vehicles, it is even further off. The Cybertruck laughably has 250km of tow range. Disconnecting every 2 hours to charge for an hour is absurd. Until we see a step change in battery technology, EVs are grocery getters in my books. So, might as well double down and make them super cheap with 100km range.

dns_snek 1y ago
There's no "objectively better", just "objectively better given some set of constraints". If my commute is less than 100km, I can charge at home, have free solar energy, and only go on long trips once or twice a year, would you still say that gas cars are "objectively better"? If you regularly go on 400km+ trips or have nowhere to charge an EV overnight then by all means, avoid EVs.
- osigurdson 1y ago
  From some objective function a hot wheels car is superior. It all just depends on everything else - my mental model for the universe is a marble rolling on an impossibly flat surface.
dreamcompiler 1y ago
I typically recharge my Model Y every 200 miles for about 20 minutes. Which is similar to how I drove in an ICE car: I like a break every 200 miles so I stop for gas, spend 5 minutes refueling and then 15 using the facilities and having a snack. The difference is that in the Tesla the refueling takes place in parallel to me using the facilities and having a snack. The car refuels itself unattended and it will notify me on my phone when it has enough charge to continue.
- osigurdson 1y ago
  how often do you have to wait around for a charge station to be available? This is the one thing that I can see if we were to have very wide scale adoption of EVS with current battery technology this would essentially become intractable.
  - dreamcompiler 1y ago
    Never. The car routes me to the nearest charge location with free space. I have heard this can be a problem in California but I rarely go there.
rsynnott 1y ago
> So all EVs on a 400km+ trip will be at the charging station 1/4 of the time. ... How many people _regularly_ make 400km trips, though? Like, the vast majority of the cars on the road at any given time are not making 400km trips, or anything like it. Some countries in Europe are not 400km across. (Also that's probably ~4 hours driving; most people are probably stopping for a bit after that anyway).
- osigurdson 1y ago
  Why then is the range of a basic car (like a Camry) 700+ km even with extensive refuelling network. If 99.9% of drivers never need this range they have smaller tanks.
  - rsynnott 1y ago
    Because increasing the range of a petrol car is practically free (and in many cases the tank sizes were kind of notionally set 50 years ago when engines were far less efficient; as engines got more efficient no reason to make them _smaller_). Like, virtually no-one is driving 700km non-stop (that's going to be probably eight hours unless you have excellent roads the whole way; it's arguably _unsafe_, and certainly most people would want to at least eat in that time), but, really, there's no downside. For electric cars, there _is_ a serious downside to having huge range; it makes them expensive (and heavy). So manufacturers will tend to stop at "sensible for most use cases". I'm sure there are some people for whom electric car range is still a problem, but it's a niche market, especially in _Europe_ (again, you can drive across many countries in Europe in 400km).
    - osigurdson 1y ago
      Yeah ya, EV range is just fine as is. No need to improve that at all.
      - rsynnott 1y ago
        I mean, sure, more would be better, but it's _fine_ for the vast majority of users at this point.
tzs 1y ago
> So all EVs on a 400km+ trip will be at the charging station 1/4 of the time That's way off, because the person above you gave a way too low charging speed. Someone who takes long trips is going to get something that charges fast like in IONIQ 5 or 6. The IONIQ 6 long range RWD model charges from 10 to 80% in 16 minutes at a 250 kW charger. That would be about 350 km of range at freeway speeds in Europe. On a long trip then, once you've used up the charge you started with and have make the rest of the trip on energy from charging breaks that would be a 16 minute break every 350 km. 350 km is about 2.8 hours of travel, so about 8% of your remaining trip time after you reach your first stop would be spent charging.
- seanmcdirmid 1y ago
  > That's way off, because the person above you gave a way too low charging speed. To be fair, 20 minutes for an L3 charge from 20 to 80% is technically under an hour.